


Last Drop

by booktick



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 14:23:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10698858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booktick/pseuds/booktick
Summary: This was Tess' last stop.





	Last Drop

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own none of this franchise.

She knows by the time she has thrown the runner off of her that it’s over. It’s been over for a good time but this is what really sets the stage up for failure. She’s not sure if Joel even noticed, with all of the action hero part he played in trying to help her. But Tess doesn’t have time to talk, they don’t have time to stop and breathe. Ellie needed them so in they went, like some heroes that weren’t. A few dozen runners barge in and that’s all it takes for them to forget, at least for the moment. She raises her hands, bloodied and beaten, strikes out at anything that charges her way. Her arms holding runners in a choke hold, tightening their grip and feeling how the bone cracks and snaps between those arms. Ellie screams and slashes with her knife and Tess knows that rage. That fight to survive. Too bad her luck ran out, there always had been a looming end to it.

It was something like this, she had dreamed of it long ago. After all of their fighting, and all of their time, it was this she dreamt of. Life wasn’t worth much to Tess unless she could somehow involve a fight into it and come out on the other side. This time she wasn’t so sure what the other side entailed for her. Joel had told her and she had turned her cheek to him. Joel was the one with reason, he had said that she needed to take time off. That she needed to take it easy and to stick to the apartments—even just for a little bit but she had been bullheaded. She wanted to make Robert fuckin’ pay, regardless if he sold their guns or not. Their shipment didn’t matter when it was Robert dragging her name and Joel’s body through the mud. She wasn’t going to let that happen, not then and not now.

Joel was too busy wielding a crowbar, too busy to notice how she stumbled some whenever she struck at a runner. She could have easily blamed it on the runner, when shit’s coming at a person like that they can off tilted or something like that. It’s easier to forget in the moment, to fight and fight until there’s nothing left and the memory of what’s to come drowns away at the body. But now’s not the time, that can come later, right before. She had to keep pushing, keep her arm steady as she fires. Tess doesn’t even flinch when blood lands on her face.

A runner rushes at her and she’s _ready_.

Tess stomps her boot down on another runner’s head, the blood splashes onto them and her jeans. The brains of what’s left scattered on the floor. She wipes her face with her arm, smearing the blood in her hair. It doesn’t matter, now does it? She lifts her head, and sees how her partners pant. Partners, that was plural. Shit. She keeps her head down and goes to the window nearby, takes deep pants and it’s like her ribs have turned into her worst enemy. The bones clutch at her heart and twist so tight it’s not too difficult to remember that she isn’t going to see sunrise.

She doesn’t lift her head at first when Joel asks if she’s alright. Tess stands tall, straightens her back, burning sensation at her shoulder. She just needs a breather, that’s all, just a bit winded. They needed to get to the Capitol building and get their fast. She didn’t have time to try and explain anything. She had to keep moving, endure and survive or whatever bullshit she had read in comics before everything went to shit. Much luck that had done her, with everything that she had done…and would do. Time had that sort of effect on people when there’s infection and soldiers pounding at your head.

They reach the roof and Joel’s already putting down the plank. It’s like planks ruled their lives, the only thing stopping them from getting one place to another. No more reaches, no more hands to pull Tess up. Joel keeps trying to start conversation as they go, and she forgets, or likes to tell herself she does, to answer. Joel doesn’t question it. It’s been a long journey, been tough and rough, no need to try and push each other. They’ve done that before and look where it got them.

By the time, they reach the Capitol building, it’s all green water and Ellie trying to give thanks that was never needed or sought out. She lets the water rush the cold to her legs, didn’t help much with the ache inside. She hadn’t taken much time to wonder what it felt like when she would aim at the head of a clicker or bash a runner’s head in. She didn’t want to think of that. She didn’t want to know if they _knew_ this suffering. It would have made things too hard, and she wasn’t going to be one of those sorts. She couldn’t afford to be like that, to live like that, there wouldn’t be much living if she did work like that. She wasn’t like Marlene though. Marlene was too busy playing rebellion against the soldiers in Boston and who knows where else. Tess was too busy trying to get rations and make it to tomorrow.

They’re just smugglers, right? She’s just supposed to be cargo. A simple drop off that went to hell and back. She should have told Marlene to find someone else. She should have stuffed her pride and let their little traitor go in the alleyway. Should have done a lot of things, should haves and could haves all blurred together and mixed into a toxic set of thoughts that smothered her vision as they went up the steps to the Capitol building. The stones are worn and cracked, much like herself. There haven’t been feet here since hours ago no doubt. The steps take the weight of them anyway without much complaint, again, much like herself.

Tess stops at the top of the steps, her hand gripping a gun so tight it’s a wonder she didn’t fire it just for the hell of it. But a wasted bullet was a matter of life and death and she wouldn’t do that to Joel or Ellie. So, she does her best to lighten her grip on the weapon, and let her arms fall to her sides instead. It’s a moment of extreme chance taking, she knows that. A solider or hunter could come along easy and--…well, they had seen that already with getting here. Fireflies weren’t the only think dropping around here today.

She has only a breath before Joel is at her side, Ellie across from him. She doesn’t dare to touch that door; the knob would have ruined her. Tess could not have done that, and she was repulsed with herself for it. It was a fucking door, she had kicked in enough in her time—why was a door so frightening? Joel is the one who shoves the doors open, shoulder in and all that. She doesn’t know if it’s him trying to look good or just too tired to care. But then again, it’s done either way.

Once the doors have been opened, it’s all over. Fireflies lay on the ground, spread out like lost and forgotten reminders to the horror of the world. Marlene probably didn’t even know yet, not that it would matter much with Marlene’s crusade. She wouldn’t see Marlene again, so what did it really matter in the end. But this, fucking this? This was a sign. This was punishment. This was…their chance and it was snuffed out on the floor beneath their feet. The red blurred her stare, if only for another breath.

Tess rushes to the bodies, already digging for anything to give them a mere hint of what to do. She’s frenzied, scattered and burning all over. She just needs something, _anything,_ to get them out of this place. She can’t and won’t let them see her for what she could be. There’s no way in hell she will turn into one of those things, not with her gun in her hand and her rage settled beneath her heart. As for Joel…well…

Joel tries, god does he try. He tries to reason with her, to comfort her when there’s been none spoken between them for a while now. He wants to go home but Boston wasn’t home. There weren’t any more _homes_ in this place. She never called her apartment home, it was something to hide in whenever Joel pissed her off or she needed to detox—but home? No.

Their luck had to run out, Joel’s words not hers. Not until now anyway. He always said that’s what kept them going, the fumes of everything around them. Joel was a take charge sort of person, had to rush in and how she had loved to see him work. Now it was her turn, she had to do the work and the grunt of it all. It wasn’t like they had another plan here, they had run out of all their plans and their choices. There was only one choice and she knew it. She wrote the fucking plan herself, it ain’t that easy to forget it.

This is her last drop. This is her last… _stop_.

Joel doesn’t get it. It doesn’t _click._ And she wants to scream.

Her shoulder sizzles and it takes everything in her now to claw at it. She swallows hard, the acid in her throat seizes and she keeps her mouth shut for a moment or two. It’s Ellie who puts together the puzzle and ruins the momentary confusion between adults. Joel is all wide eyed, doe eyed, whatever. He’s probably reorganizing that brain of his as she had when first bit, while going on the rest of the path. He’s trying to find balance but there isn’t any, no planks to guide him to her. And then the rage kicks in, silent and hurt.

She tears her shirt down with more force than needed, never breaking eye contact. And Joel is… _startled._ He’s shaking so bad he doesn’t even realize it, and nothing shakes Joel anymore. He almost breaks eye contact, tries to pretend but they can’t. There’s no more rain on windows for them, no more ‘let there be light’ and no more dates outside the wall, right? That shit’s done for and they both know that Tess ain’t the sort of type to make it too sentimental. She’s tugging up Ellie’s sleeve, showing him what the world can do and he shakes his head at her like he did when she told him Tommy was gone.

That’s her crusade, that’s her problem—Joel didn’t sign up for it.

But he _owes_ her. God, does he owe her and she’s fucking collecting on that shit.

She’s so close to him that his breath shines her cheeks. He can’t even keep full eye contact now. He’s too buzzed, her words smearing all over him. She reminds him of what they are…were. She can’t say the words she’s never said, maybe won’t, wouldn’t really matter now anyway. But they’re heard, she knows they must have been. She hopes they were. Joel was never too good with subtext, huh?

The banging from outside is what breaks the moment they have. She’s the one who has to take action, has to fucking pull the trigger to get them to wake up. She can fight, she’s good at fighting. Joel’s plea is muffled and weak, she shoves him and he actually stumbles some. She reminds him of what she’s capable of, what she can do when cornered. He doesn’t have to worry about putting her down now. Tess has refused her destination, she refuses the world.

By the time the doors shut and her time with Joel is over. The girl out of sight, Ellie was in good hands she tells herself. He would keep her safe. And Joel…shit happens and you move on. Joel could do that, he could keep moving forward. He would fight to get out of here. No hunter was going to trap them, no runner would sink a fate into them. That wasn’t going to happen because Joel wasn’t her.

Tess turns towards the doors and backs up a few steps. Her boots click, echo in the room as she steadies herself a good distance from the door. But she’s fuckin’ _ready_. The banging gets so loud it suffocates her ears until the sound sort of just…fades away. Her arms raise and she aims.

_Fuck the light._


End file.
